Stop Panicking!

 I panic and overreact almost all the time.

Sometimes that serves me well. 

When I found a lump in my breast 8 years ago, I went into full-blown panic. Of course, I found the lump on a Saturday and had to wait until the hospital opened on Monday to get a diagnosis. Do you know how many thoughts can go through your brain in one day and two nights? Far too many! I went from thinking it might just be a cyst- I had one before to thinking it was stage 4 cancer and I'd have only a month to live! When the doctor told me that it was cancer, but just stage one, and it hadn't spread to other organs, I cried with relief.  I think my panicking served me well; if I wasn't panicking, it would have been easy to put off seeing the doctor, leaving the cancer to grow and possibly spread.

But constant panic isn't healthy; the hormones produced by panic and stress tend to wear down the body.

I realised that in these past few days.

My first big panic was the Etsy ruling, but the more I read it and watch or read what other people are saying about it, the more I realise it might not affect me. 

If it does, then I'll just have to rethink things and find another way to make some money. It's not as if I've made a load of sales and have a customer base that I'll lose. Sitting at my computer, crying and screaming at the unfairness of the ruling isn't going to help anything. All that did was make my heart race and flood my system with cortisol and other stress hormones, which isn't healthy.

The other thing that has me on edge is the typhoon that is creeping this way. Typhoon 30 is heading towards Kyushu; from what I can understand, the storm won't bring very strong winds but a lot of rain. But heavy rain can cause landslides, and living at the foot of a mountain means that there is a possibility of that happening.

Again, I've spent the last couple of days obsessively watching the weather news and constantly checking the weather app on my phone. Neither of these things really helps! David moved some of the stuff from outside, things that could fly and hit the cars. I've shopped so I don't have to think about going out in the heavy rain; driving can get a bit scary when the rain is too heavy to see clearly. Other than that, there's nothing that I can do; just wait it out.

I really do need to be calmer. It doesn't help me that my mind goes to the worst-case scenario straight away.

This evening I'm going to get on my bed and watch TV, read a bit and try to chill out.

I called Hannah just before I started writing this; she's happy about the storm as her class might be cancelled tomorrow. She isn't worried at all, maybe a bit, but she's doing her research and has plans to watch something on Netflix after dinner. She is focusing on something else, which is a good thing.

I just hope that the alert on my phone doesn't go off!

I still have a load of photos to sort out from my Kagoshima trip!

Here are a few more.

Sakurajima covered in clouds.

Torii gate we saw from the bus.

One of the trams.

Department store, such a beautiful building.

I even designed a T-shirt.

Looks good, at least I think so!